How to Practice Making Money

At first, I was horrible. I’m not ashamed to admit that. You can look back at my first couple posts, if you need evidence.

I like to think though, I have improved. With practice, my editing became better, I started to have clearer thoughts, and I have a better idea of what people like to read.

The improvement process, wasn’t hard, it just took time. It started with a commitment to write. After that, I started reading books on writing, I’m also lucky enough to have readers offer ideas for improvement. I then test out those ideas.

The process of commitment, learning, implementation, and feedback is how we learn most things. If I wanted to learn something like programming or improve my golf swing, I would go about it the same way as I did writing.

What if instead of writing, programming, or golf, you want to get good at making money. Can you apply the same learning process? In my opinion, of course!

And just like anything else, when you start learning how to do something new, you’re going to be bad at first. But that’s OK. With commitment, learning, implementation, and feedback, you will eventually get good. It’s not necessarily hard, it just takes time.

2 Ways to Practice Making Money

The goal of this post was to create two ways you can practice making money. I only had two requirements to these exercises. First, they must require a small learning curve to begin. Second, each exercise should have a minimal amount of risk.

Exercise # 1 – Buy and Sell the Same Thing on eBay Repeatedly

Go buy something on eBay with a high demand. For example, a GPS device.

Once you get it, immediately sell it. Your goal is to sell it for more than you paid for.

Get a higher price by improving the headline, copy, pictures, ending time, buy it now price, etc… Once you sell the GPS, buy another one. Again, your goal is to sell it for more than you paid for and more than you sold it for previously.

Keep on doing this until you get to a point where you’ve maxed out how much you can make. Then, start buying in lots of 3, 5, or 10 for a discount. Now, resell those GPS devices individually. This business plan is incredibly simple, but it works.

Exercise # 2 – Publishing Content on eHow

Your goal in this exercise is to find out the method to publishing articles that will give you the most reward over 90 days.

For this exercise, you will test out what topic to write about, how to work your headline, how long your body should be, the time it took you to write, and the earnings it received over a 90 day period.

The goal is to maximize the amount of money you make per article per time spent.

Note: I’m familiar with eHow, so that’s why I use in this example. However, there are other sites like Squidoo and HubPages that you can earn money from publishing content.

Why Practice?

If I continue to write everyday for the next two years, I’m excited to think about where I will be. With continued learning, action, and testing, I know I’ll become a better writer.

Where will you be in two years if you practice making money? Every great entrepreneur got started at a young age. At 16 Warren Buffett, was putting pinball machines in local barbershops. Richard Branson was selling records out of the back of his car. It was those days that they learned how to sell, how to price their product, how to negotiate. In other words, they learned how to make money. And after all, isn’t that what business really is?

Good advice. Actually trying to earn money is the best way to learn. Now, reading advice is also good but it should be done in coordination with actual attempts to make money. Only by really participating can you really understand the challenges, details, meaning, value… of what you are learning.

I haven’t tried those 2 methods. But running real website and trying experiments on what works to earn money and what doesn’t is useful. You can try affiliate programs like Amazon and ad based programs like Google AdSense and chikita. You can try selling direct ads… I find actually making money doing those things is much harder than what it seems like when you read about them. But you also learn what works for you. My main strength seems to be creating compelling content and the marketing piece is not my forte. But over time you can learn how to take advantage of your strengths to build income.

RJ – those two pieces of advice are excellent. I’ve never practiced buying and selling on eBay ( I just occasionally sell there), but I know people who do. With both examples, you really can get better at it over time.

I’d also suggest using craigslist. I think those users might be a little more impulsive. ex. This weekend I listed an item I bought for $40 (remote start unit) and sold it for $70. I listed it as $75, but tried to nudge people with a $5 discount if they bought it this weekend. I had $70 cash by Sunday night

I’ve considered creating eHow, Squidoo and HubPages to sort of establish my authority as an “expert” and practice making money. Do you think they’re a good platform for doing that or do you think a blog is better, both in authority and money making?

Its funny, I’ve actually made more from Squidoo than from my blog so far, despite the fact that Squidoo takes less work, and is much easier to use. Maybe this is because of the already high rank of Squidoo in the search engines and how easy they are to monetize. Either way, I haven’t made much money at all, but every once in a while I’ll get a random sale on a Squidoo lens or two.

This is a great way to lay out a simple idea. Many of the people behind the most successful financial ventures in this world began with the simplest ideas. I, myself, have just recently begun writing for eHow (I needed another source of income, however small), and I anticipate it teaching me a lot more than just writing skills.

It is unfortunate though that many of the simple ways people used to make money (i.e. Branson selling records out of his car) wouldn’t really work as well these days, with so much cheap and easy access to products through companies like Amazon. However, the eBay idea you mentioned is just that type of simple business venture, in a much more technologically-minded world!

I wouldn’t discount simple ideas like selling records out of the back of a car. I just had two kids come to my door and ask if I needed my lawn mowed over the summer. I bet those 12 year old kids are going to make more money than 99% of bloggers this summer.

I don’t write for the money. It’s a hobby, and one that I enjoy. I could make a lot more money by going door to door mowing lawns as well… and I enjoy that too, but writing is something that provides a sense of ownership, and allows one to engage in a little of the business side of things. As a military member, its one of the few things that is portable enough to even be a potential money maker as a side hustle. And its a good time.

This is a great article.The physical act of trading something for something compels more of the same actions and behavior. No matter how small, try and provide a service or sell a product and see if you can make money. when you do succeed, just build on it and bigger success is sure to follow.